Deep schisms mar Compaq 64-bit plans

Two divisions united by lack of agreement

Sources close to Compaq revealed today the depth of bitter antagonism between its two server divisions, with bush fires breaking out over the Alpha-Merced roadmaps. The source, who declined to be named for obvious reasons, said: "There is a fundamental issue with Compaq, and that is they have two different server divisions trying to drive forward different strategies." She said that the high end server division, headed up by Jesse Lipcon, and which came from the Digital camp, was "gung ho" about the Alpha platform. But the server division which existed at Compaq before it took over Digital, felt similarly about the x.86 architecture. The source said that these two divisions were slogging it out internally and that Compaq would be forced, sooner rather than later, to resolve the damaging in-fighting. No one had yet made those hard decisions, she said. "This is a fundamental schism in the Compaq business." While Alpha production was being ramped up by Samsung, it was a very different business selling machines using them rather than fabbing them, she added. ®